


Like A Bird

by aderyn



Series: Compounds or Stars [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, ASiB, Gen, how much do birds eat anyway, let's have dinner, shaken and stirred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-15
Updated: 2012-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:17:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He’s never eaten dinner, not in the way she means."</p><p>“'John,' he says, because he may not recognize hunger, but he knows sustenance when he sees it."</p><p>The mind-body problem is clearly not his area.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Bird

 

_“There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for awhile in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere.” –Thomas Merton , Zen and the Birds of Appetite_

 

He’s never eaten dinner, not in the way she means.  Or perhaps in the way she means, but not _in the way she means._

“John _,”_ he says, because he may not recognize hunger, but he knows sustenance when he sees it.

Why don’t people realise that a wire in the brain is very like a wire in the blood? There’s more than one way to feed a buzz .

***

“John,” he says, setting down the bow, “What causes a person to shake for an hour, then stop, then start again?”

He could come up with a list himself, of course, and one that includes several obscure neurotoxins, but John will start with the basics.

“Anxiety, cold, fever, fatigue, pain, neurological problems, hunger…”  Every word’s weighted with question marks.

“I’m not…hypoglycaemic,” says Sherlock.

“What about all of the others, then?"

And John does something dexterous with his hands that tells him, possibly, _none of the above_.

***

He could have been a philosopher, but the mind-body problem is clearly not his…

_What does the uptake of ghrelin in the hippocampus feel like?_

“John,” Sherlock says, and John tells him, fondly,

“You eat like a bird; your anterior superior iliac spine shouldn’t be that sharp.”

And he thinks, _but_ _they eat far more a day, proportionally, than most mammals, the passerine birds._

**Author's Note:**

> “Of all animals, birds possess the quickest motions, the most energetic respiration, and the warmest blood, and they consequently undergo the most rapid change of substance and need the most food.”—from Popular Science Monthly, 1887


End file.
